Internal emails: Treasury officials held 2009 backroom bailout meeting on Delphi pension plans

Internal Treasury Department emails obtained by The Daily Caller show that in June 2009 a high-ranking Treasury official planned a backroom meeting to discuss the pension plans for 20,000 nonunion Delphi salaried retirees.
Those retirees lost between 30 and 70 percent of their pensions, as well as their healthcare, life insurance and other benefits. Unionized employees working alongside them, however, saw their pensions and benefits made whole.
The Obama administration has blamed this decision on the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), a federal government agency that handles private-sector pension benefits issues. But these internal emails indicate the Treasury Department was involved to a greater degree than the administration has conceded publicly.

“Anything new on the PBGC front regarding Delphi?” General Motors official Walter Borst wrote in an email to Treasury officials Matt Feldman and Harry Wilson on June 9, 2009.
“I am meeting with them tomorrow and will have more to report after the meeting.” Feldman replied to Borst, copying Wilson.
Although Treasury officials have pointed to the PBGC during congressional testimony as the decision makers, this correspondence indicates the agency’s involvement in the decision to terminate the pensions.
“Have you guys begun a dialogue with the UAW over your desire to see the hourly plan terminated?” Treasury’s Feldman wrote in another email to GM officials on June 30, 2009, copying Wilson.
“One concern I have is that while the PGBC [sic] is likely to agree to terminate, it’s not clear what position they will take on the Benefit Guaranty. At a minimum this could get messy and the UAW should probably be brought into the loop.”

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/28/documents-treasury-officials-held-2009-backroom-bailout-meeting-on-delphi-pension-plans/#ixzz2AaFeiQDC